In the past few years, corporations have been busy building their World Wide Web sites. While creating web pages is a relatively simple task, adding fresh content and managing a web site to ward off information obsolescence is not simple at all.
On the contrary, managing content on a busy World Wide Web site is an increasingly complex problem. As a web site grows, the likelihood of anyone being able to keep links, navigation, and functions updated is minuscule. This is not for lack of effort or resources, but rather because of the exponentially growing number of links and elements that need refreshing with every new addition. No amount of individual page redesign can make up for the basic need of a real structural fix. Unless preemptive steps are taken, maintenance will soon consume the lion's share of all site resources. Costing between $250,000 and $500,000 annually, manually managing changes to a web site will drain even the deepest pockets. The magnitude of the cost is an important consideration for corporations, particularly because monetary returns from a web site cannot always be easily measured from an accounting standpoint.
Software solutions at the high end of the market include $50,000 to $100,000 middle-ware and software packages and may require equally expensive hardware configurations. As a result, such software programs serve only the corporate elite and the high-tech industry. Examples of such software solutions include StoryServer software produced by Vignette Corporation of Austin, Tex.
Software solutions at the low end of the market are hypertext markup language (HTML) editors with server plug-ins and software packages that try to emulate server functions from a user's desktop. These solutions try to perform some management tasks, but cannot manage content. At best, they merely rearrange files on the web server from a remote desktop.
Applicants have recognized a need in the industry for an elegant, simple, powerful, and inexpensive content management tool. That is, Applicants have determined that corporations and other users need a platform-independent, server-side software package that allows users to design and manage simple web sites to complex, database-driven web sites.
Applicants have determined that it would be desirable to have a method and/or system that permits users to interface with a web management tool through, for example, an Internet browser without a client-side application, thereby eliminating the need for users to buy and master additional software. Applicants have recognized that such a system could advantageously reside, for example, at an Internet service provider to eliminate the cost of shrink-wrapping and to facilitate optional automatic on-line software upgrades.